6 Things to Know About Renewing Your FAFSA

Filling out the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) is the only way to apply for federal financial aid like grants, work-study, and student loans. If you’ve filed your FAFSA the last academic year and you think you’ll need financial aid for the next academic year, it’s required that you renew your FAFSA. For example, if you filled out the 2016-17 FAFSA for financial aid from Fall 2016 to Summer 2017, you will need to file your 2017-18 FAFSA in order to be considered for financial aid in the 2017-18 year.

We recommend you update your FAFSA annually because you may qualify to receive a variety of grants, work-study opportunities, and/or student loans. Many scholarships even require you to fill out the FAFSA as a part of their application process.

What You Need to Know About Renewing Your FAFSA

The latest version of the FAFSA is available starting October 1st. So, the 2017-18 FAFSA is already available and the 2018-19 FAFSA will be available starting this upcoming October 1st.

Renewal FAFSA may be faster than reapplying with a new application. However, the Renewal FAFSA is mainly for your convenience. If you want to start a new FAFSA you can do that too.

Are you working while attending college? Make sure you update any income-related information. You will be asked to provide tax information as well. Don’t forget to update your untaxed income, such as child support received, interest income, and veteran’s non-education benefits for you and for your parents, if you are a dependent student. P.S. Always use the IRS Data Retrieval Tool if it is available. This tool pulls information into your FAFSA directly from your IRS tax documents and ensures that your data is accurate. You may be selected for “Verification” if you do not use the IRS Data Retrieval Tool. Verification is a process where you are asked to verify the information that you included in your FAFSA.

If you changed your institution (university or college) you must update that information as well. Cost of attendance is different at each school and is factored into your financial aid eligibility.

Remember to update your address. You can include your temporary student-living address or your parent’s home address.

If you are an eligible noncitizen who applied for FAFSA, update any changes related to the Department of Homeland Security. For example, if you were a Permanent Resident the last time you filled the FAFSA, and you are a citizen now, remember to update your information.

After making changes to your FAFSA you will receive a confirmation that your FAFSA has been processed. You will also be notified if there are any outstanding documents to complete. Always follow up with your college or university to double check that they received your FAFSA information and also to ask if they require any other school specific paperwork to be completed.

Utah doesn’t have one specific FAFSA deadline for all schools. If you want to know when your college or university’s financial aid deadline is, we recommend that you call the financial aid office.

We encourage you to read our Application and Solicitation Disclosure PDF carefully before applying for Complete Student Loans. We want to be completely transparent with you so there’s no surprises later.